Friday, July 13, 2012

Shepstone Gardens

On Monday a group of us went to Shepstone Gardens, a Heritage site and a busy wedding and events venue. It is a whole conglomeration of stone constructions - houses, chapels, pathways, walls, a garden shed and a studio, commissioned by the Modderfontein Dynamite Company and built around the turn of the century by Afrikaners after the Anglo Boer War - from 1 000 tons of quartz rock. Apparently Mahatma Gandhi stayed on and off in the encampment at the foot of the ridge, while his friend, the architect Kallenbach was building.

The first sketch I did there is on its way as a postcard in the Postcards from my Walk project, so I won't show it yet. (my last one never reached its destination in California, so holding thumbs for this one!)

I had another prepared splashy watercolour sheet in my sketchbook and the blues and browns fitted well into the shape of the wedding chapel, so that was my next subject.

There was a little boy looking like he needed something to do (he was on school holidays and his dad was working in the Gardens) on the lawn next to me so I offered him a sketchbook and pencil, which he shyly but eagerly accepted. He told me his name was Gift, and he spent the next hour or more drawing intently - watching me looking up and down and sketching, and then following suit. I think he indeed has a gift, to be so young - in Grade 2 so not more than 6 or 7 - and concentrate for so long on his carefully observed drawing. I left him my pencil, I think I'll go back with a sketchbook - a possible young urban sketcher/artist/architect in the making!

A lovely watercolor and a story just as lovely. How nice to be able to connect to a young person in just such a way as this. He is quite good at observing and I expect he will continue perhaps because of you.

What a story! I think you both were given a gift that day - he, for your generosity and care; you, for meeting this young artist!! I hope you see him again. Love the sketch - so well done and your buildings are always so beautiful with life in them even though they are stone or brick.